#DailyDevotion God Grant Us All Repentance
Hos. 4 4Let no one accuse, and let no one correct; for your people are like those who quarrel with a priest. 5You will stumble during the day, and the prophet also will stumble with you at night; and I will destroy your mother. 6Ignorance destroys My people. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you so that you will not be My priest. You forget the law of your God, and I too will forget your children.
It is written in Deut. 17, “12If anyone is so rebellious as not to listen to the priest who is there to serve the LORD your God, or to the judge, that man must die; get rid of such wickedness in Israel.” The LORD accuses the Israelites of being like such people here through Hosea. They are already as good as dead. Since they are as good as dead, there is no need to accuse anyone or correct anyone. The LORD has given up on them. The time for judgment has come. Can anyone come back once the LORD has pronounced judgment? We can see they can with Manasseh, who was the 14th kind of Judah and with the city of Nineveh. One would hope that such a warning of a coming judgment would call these people back to repentance.
It doesn’t seem they are going to be repentant. Both people and prophets will stumble during the day and night like blind men. The mother here is probably referring to Israel, though in the coming onslaught by the Assyrians, many mothers would be killed by them.
What is this people’s problem? They are ignorant. Why are they ignorant? Because they have rejected knowledge. They have forgotten the law of God. It seems for certain the Torah, the Law of the LORD was in the land. Priests and prophets taught it. It would also see there were prophets and priests who corrupted it as well to please the people. It’s never easy to see where the corrupting influence comes from as it seems to be happening at multiple fronts. The people, the rulers and the people are all pushing for corruption from different angles, each one corrupting more and more people until the whole people are rotten to the core.
We can see it in our own culture. While we might try to pinpoint where the corruption comes from there is no single place to point to. There are people who despise what God has taught them so they act out. When called on it, they tell their accusers they are unloving, and the accusers become silent. There are those in the churches who, through a corruption of mercy and grace start teaching evil and good and good is evil. So more people are corrupted. The media and news have those who hate God and want to live in their corruption without judgment and tell those who oppose their teachings to not judge them and they are not called to repent anymore. Those who lead the people no longer care if there are standards and as long as they give the people what they want, the people will hand their power over to them. Though the LORD sends us messages from the faithful and from nature itself, will we repent? In Rev. 9 it is written, “20But the rest of the people, whom these plagues hadn’t killed, didn’t repent by turning from what their hands had made. They did not give up worshiping demons and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, that can’t see or hear or walk. 21And they did not repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual vice, and their stealing.” It doesn’t look good. Nevertheless, God preserved a remnant of Israel in Jerusalem. God preserves His faithful people who follow Jesus, who turn from the sins they used to trust and put their faith in Jesus.
Merciful Father, grant that we live repentant lives, listening to the voice of Jesus and trusting in Him in all our ways. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.